Jack Heaton, wireless operator

by A. Frederick Collins

In the artillery the eyes of the army, which is the aviation section, provides the artillery with airplane and balloon service and in order to cooperate successfully with them the wireless operator must have a special training. For three weeks or so we did nothing but buzzer practise; that is a buzzer, which is an electric bell without the bell, is connected in circuit with a battery, a telegraph key and some twenty head-phones. The beginners put on the receivers and an instructor worked the key.

As I could easily take twenty words a minute I was made an instructor. Then there were lectures on the elements of electricity and magnetism and by the end of the first month the class was ready for the fundamentals of wireless telegraphy. All of that was old stuff for me and as they say in the army it was pickin’s.

The time came when we were introduced to the real wireless apparatus and although the sets were portable and of shorter range than any I had handled since I was a kid operator they were certainly beauties. There were three different types or wireless sets; each one was designed to cover a certain distance, and each sending set had its special receiving set. The range of the smallest set was about a mile, while that of the largest was about twenty-five miles. These are very short ranges but enough for army purposes where messages are sent from the trenches through one operator after another or relayed until they reach headquarters.

As I said before the purpose of the wireless stations is to cooperate with airplanes and balloons and aid in the control of artillery fire. So in the months that followed our work was to go out on the firing range with the batteries and to cooperate with the airplanes and balloons.

I had been warranted as Corporal in charge of the 2nd Battalion Radio Detail. You know, I suppose, that a regiment consists of two battalions, each battalion of three batteries, each battery of four guns and the complement of about 200 odd men necessary for their action, So my detail was responsible for coordinating the eyes, that is the airplanes and balloons of the three batteries in the second battalion, with the guns.

Possibly you may wonder why it is necessary for airplanes to work with the batteries and here is the answer: the guns, or pieces as they are called, were American 75’s, that is, the bore of the gun is 75 millimeters in diameter, and as the range they are fired over is seldom less than two miles some one must spot the fire, that is see just where the shells hit around the target and then tell the gun crew so that they can point their guns more accurately, all of which is called directing the fire.

Now an airplane can do this to perfection but there must be some kind of communication established between it and the battery, and this is where we came in with our wireless. I had five men in my detail, there being two operators and three panelmen and of the latter and their work I will tell you later.

Our regular performance each day was like this: The batteries would go out to the range in the morning, place their guns and set up their B. C. stations, that is, Battery Commander stations where the Battery Commander would be located within a few feet of the pieces to work out any problems that might arise in aiming them.

With the detail and accompanied by a second lieutenant, who was the officer in charge, we would arrive at the range a few minutes before one o’clock which was the time the batteries were scheduled to fire. The operators and the panelmen would get busy setting up the aerial wire system. This consisted of two jointed masts about fifteen feet high and each one of which was made in five sections.

The masts would be set up about a hundred yards apart and a single aerial wire was stretched between them. The leading-in wire was then connected to a receiving set and the latter to the ground. This was formed of a pair of wires stretched on the ground directly under the aerial wire and to each of their free ends a copper mat was fixed with a little dirt thrown over it.